This is a book about unprecedented families—networks of strangers linked by genes, medical technology, and the human desire for affinity and identity. It chronicles the chain of choices that couples ...
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This is a book about unprecedented families—networks of strangers linked by genes, medical technology, and the human desire for affinity and identity. It chronicles the chain of choices that couples and single mothers make—how to conceive, how to place sperm donors in their family tree, and what to do when it suddenly becomes clear that there are children out there that share half their child’s DNA. Do shared genes make you family? Do children find anything in common? What becomes of the random networks that arise once the members of the families of donor siblings find one another? Based on over 350 interviews with children and parents from all over the United States, Hertz and Nelson explore what it means to children to be a donor sibling and what it’s like to be a parent who discovers four, six, or even a dozen children who share half the DNA of one’s own child. At the heart of their investigation are remarkable relationships woven from tenuous bits of information and fueled by intense curiosity. The authors suggest that donor siblings are expanding the possibilities for extended kinship in the United States.Less

Rosanna HertzMargaret K. Nelson

Published in print: 2019-01-31

This is a book about unprecedented families—networks of strangers linked by genes, medical technology, and the human desire for affinity and identity. It chronicles the chain of choices that couples and single mothers make—how to conceive, how to place sperm donors in their family tree, and what to do when it suddenly becomes clear that there are children out there that share half their child’s DNA. Do shared genes make you family? Do children find anything in common? What becomes of the random networks that arise once the members of the families of donor siblings find one another? Based on over 350 interviews with children and parents from all over the United States, Hertz and Nelson explore what it means to children to be a donor sibling and what it’s like to be a parent who discovers four, six, or even a dozen children who share half the DNA of one’s own child. At the heart of their investigation are remarkable relationships woven from tenuous bits of information and fueled by intense curiosity. The authors suggest that donor siblings are expanding the possibilities for extended kinship in the United States.

Kiyoteru Tsutsui

Sociology, Politics, Social Movements and Social Change, Comparative and Historical Sociology

Rights Make Might examines why the three most salient minority groups in Japan all expanded their activism since the late 1970s against significant headwinds, and chronicles how global human rights ...
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Rights Make Might examines why the three most salient minority groups in Japan all expanded their activism since the late 1970s against significant headwinds, and chronicles how global human rights ideas and institutions empowered all three groups to engage in enhanced political activities. It also documents the contributions of the three groups to the expansion of global human rights activities, demonstrating the feedback mechanism from local groups to global institutions. Examining the prehistory of the three groups, it first sets the scene for minority politics in Japan before the 1970s, which featured politically dormant Ainu, an indigenous people in northern Japan; active but unsuccessful Koreans, a stateless colonial legacy group; and active and established Burakumin, a former outcaste group that still faced social discrimination. Against this background, the infusion of global human rights ideas and the opening of international human rights arenas as new venues for contestation transformed minority activists’ movement actorhood, or subjective understanding about their position and entitled rights in Japan, as well as the views of the Japanese public and political establishment toward those groups, thus catalyzing substantial gains for all three groups. Having benefited from global human rights, all three groups also repaid their debt by contributing to the consolidation and expansion of global human rights principles and instruments. Rights Make Might offers a detailed historical and comparative analysis of the co-constitutive relationship between international human rights activities and local politics that contributes to our understanding of international norms, multilateral institutions, social movements, human rights, ethnoracial politics, and Japanese society.Less

Rights Make Might : Global Human Rights and Minority Social Movements in Japan

Kiyoteru Tsutsui

Published in print: 2018-10-18

Rights Make Might examines why the three most salient minority groups in Japan all expanded their activism since the late 1970s against significant headwinds, and chronicles how global human rights ideas and institutions empowered all three groups to engage in enhanced political activities. It also documents the contributions of the three groups to the expansion of global human rights activities, demonstrating the feedback mechanism from local groups to global institutions. Examining the prehistory of the three groups, it first sets the scene for minority politics in Japan before the 1970s, which featured politically dormant Ainu, an indigenous people in northern Japan; active but unsuccessful Koreans, a stateless colonial legacy group; and active and established Burakumin, a former outcaste group that still faced social discrimination. Against this background, the infusion of global human rights ideas and the opening of international human rights arenas as new venues for contestation transformed minority activists’ movement actorhood, or subjective understanding about their position and entitled rights in Japan, as well as the views of the Japanese public and political establishment toward those groups, thus catalyzing substantial gains for all three groups. Having benefited from global human rights, all three groups also repaid their debt by contributing to the consolidation and expansion of global human rights principles and instruments. Rights Make Might offers a detailed historical and comparative analysis of the co-constitutive relationship between international human rights activities and local politics that contributes to our understanding of international norms, multilateral institutions, social movements, human rights, ethnoracial politics, and Japanese society.

Tamara Kay and R.L. Evans

Sociology, Politics, Social Movements and Social Change, Social Movements and Social Change

How did activists create a dynamic broad-based movement during NAFTA negotiations that politicized trade, making it a contentious issue for the first time in history? And how did their NAFTA ...
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How did activists create a dynamic broad-based movement during NAFTA negotiations that politicized trade, making it a contentious issue for the first time in history? And how did their NAFTA mobilization influence trade policy and set the stage for future battles over trade? Trade Battles answers these questions using data from over 200 in-depth interviews, contributing to a vibrant and burgeoning literature that tries to understand how civil society shapes state policy. Trade Battles shows how activists created a new set of institutionalized and disruptive strategies around trade that leveraged broader cleavages across state and nonstate arenas. Activists exploited these leverage points by mobilizing across them, which enabled them to politicize trade policy and influence the content of the agreement itself. So powerful was activists’ pushback against NAFTA that future administrations closed many state institutional channels in order to thwart public opposition, curtailing public access, participation, and input. This forced activists to try to kill many subsequent trade agreements whole cloth rather than improve them, as they did during the NAFTA struggle. The analysis in Trade Battles therefore shows that the NAFTA battle was less about trade policy than the role of democratic state institutions in policymaking. By exposing the linkages between institutional opportunities and democratic practices, Trade Battles reveals how critical state institutions are for activists’ efforts to shape not only trade policy, but a plethora of international policies from climate change to migration. When the state closes institutions, it effectively severs policymaking from democratic intervention.Less

Trade Battles : Activism and the Politicization of International Trade Policy

Tamara KayR.L. Evans

Published in print: 2018-10-04

How did activists create a dynamic broad-based movement during NAFTA negotiations that politicized trade, making it a contentious issue for the first time in history? And how did their NAFTA mobilization influence trade policy and set the stage for future battles over trade? Trade Battles answers these questions using data from over 200 in-depth interviews, contributing to a vibrant and burgeoning literature that tries to understand how civil society shapes state policy. Trade Battles shows how activists created a new set of institutionalized and disruptive strategies around trade that leveraged broader cleavages across state and nonstate arenas. Activists exploited these leverage points by mobilizing across them, which enabled them to politicize trade policy and influence the content of the agreement itself. So powerful was activists’ pushback against NAFTA that future administrations closed many state institutional channels in order to thwart public opposition, curtailing public access, participation, and input. This forced activists to try to kill many subsequent trade agreements whole cloth rather than improve them, as they did during the NAFTA struggle. The analysis in Trade Battles therefore shows that the NAFTA battle was less about trade policy than the role of democratic state institutions in policymaking. By exposing the linkages between institutional opportunities and democratic practices, Trade Battles reveals how critical state institutions are for activists’ efforts to shape not only trade policy, but a plethora of international policies from climate change to migration. When the state closes institutions, it effectively severs policymaking from democratic intervention.

What is at stake in the modern combatting of hate in liberal democratic societies? This book takes up the question and offers a critical exploration of the basic assumptions, ideals and agendas ...
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What is at stake in the modern combatting of hate in liberal democratic societies? This book takes up the question and offers a critical exploration of the basic assumptions, ideals and agendas behind the fighting of hate, as expressed for example through anti-hate speech and anti-hate crime initiatives. Most research on hate crime, on hatred as such, and on the -isms and -phobias with which it is commonly connected (racism, anti-Semitism, homophobia etc.) are written and published in what might be called a “preventionalist” spirit. That is, such studies are undertaken in order to prevent hate or to strengthen the combating of the harms and crimes with which it is associated. This book is different in so far as it insists upon a more theoretically distanced and exploratory approach to the topic of hatred. It asks questions such as: what are the normative presuppositions, the ideological roots, the promises, the limits, and—not least—the blind spots of the modern fighting of hate? When and why did it become necessary or legitimate to fight it? What is the meaning of “hate”? And how does the modern and public use of the term relate to the longer and broader history of the concept? In this book, a group of distinguished scholars explore these questions and offer a range of explanatory and normative perspectives on what is at stake in the awkward relationship between hate and liberal democracy.Less

Hate, Politics, Law : Critical Perspectives on Combating Hate

Published in print: 2018-08-30

What is at stake in the modern combatting of hate in liberal democratic societies? This book takes up the question and offers a critical exploration of the basic assumptions, ideals and agendas behind the fighting of hate, as expressed for example through anti-hate speech and anti-hate crime initiatives. Most research on hate crime, on hatred as such, and on the -isms and -phobias with which it is commonly connected (racism, anti-Semitism, homophobia etc.) are written and published in what might be called a “preventionalist” spirit. That is, such studies are undertaken in order to prevent hate or to strengthen the combating of the harms and crimes with which it is associated. This book is different in so far as it insists upon a more theoretically distanced and exploratory approach to the topic of hatred. It asks questions such as: what are the normative presuppositions, the ideological roots, the promises, the limits, and—not least—the blind spots of the modern fighting of hate? When and why did it become necessary or legitimate to fight it? What is the meaning of “hate”? And how does the modern and public use of the term relate to the longer and broader history of the concept? In this book, a group of distinguished scholars explore these questions and offer a range of explanatory and normative perspectives on what is at stake in the awkward relationship between hate and liberal democracy.

In this book, the author shows how employees, organizations, and even friends and family are struggling to understand how the expected norms for mobile-communication connectedness function when ...
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In this book, the author shows how employees, organizations, and even friends and family are struggling to understand how the expected norms for mobile-communication connectedness function when people are working. Until the early 2000s workplaces provided most of the computers and portable devices that employees used to do their jobs and communicate with others. Now, people bring their own mobile devices to work, use them to circumvent official organizational channels, and create new norms for how communication occurs. Managers and organizations set policies, enforce rules, and create their own workarounds to navigate the ever-changing mobile-communication environment. This book draws on over two decades of research studies and fieldwork, consisting of 150 distinct interviews and focus groups, representing people in over 35 different types of jobs, to claim that people assume mobile communication is a uniform practice. Instead, the book reveals underlying—often hidden—issues of control and power that shape how people are permitted and expected to use mobiles to communicate while working. The stories and extended examples reveal a wide-ranging account of how these portable tools are used across work environments today. The book develops a grounded theory describing the ongoing negotiation for control when people use their personally owned devices while working. These lifelines integrate information, communication, and data, and they connect people in unexpected and often conflicting ways.Less

Negotiating Control : Organizations and Mobile Communication

Keri K. Stephens

Published in print: 2018-08-20

In this book, the author shows how employees, organizations, and even friends and family are struggling to understand how the expected norms for mobile-communication connectedness function when people are working. Until the early 2000s workplaces provided most of the computers and portable devices that employees used to do their jobs and communicate with others. Now, people bring their own mobile devices to work, use them to circumvent official organizational channels, and create new norms for how communication occurs. Managers and organizations set policies, enforce rules, and create their own workarounds to navigate the ever-changing mobile-communication environment. This book draws on over two decades of research studies and fieldwork, consisting of 150 distinct interviews and focus groups, representing people in over 35 different types of jobs, to claim that people assume mobile communication is a uniform practice. Instead, the book reveals underlying—often hidden—issues of control and power that shape how people are permitted and expected to use mobiles to communicate while working. The stories and extended examples reveal a wide-ranging account of how these portable tools are used across work environments today. The book develops a grounded theory describing the ongoing negotiation for control when people use their personally owned devices while working. These lifelines integrate information, communication, and data, and they connect people in unexpected and often conflicting ways.

Elisabeth Schimpfössl

Sociology, Social Stratification, Inequality, and Mobility, Social Theory

This book looks at representatives of the top 0.1 per cent of Russian society: their stories, trajectories, ideas about life, and how they see their role and position at the top of Russian society. ...
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This book looks at representatives of the top 0.1 per cent of Russian society: their stories, trajectories, ideas about life, and how they see their role and position at the top of Russian society. They are explored through their own stories: eighty interviews with multimillionaires and billionaires, and their spouses and children, conducted between 2008 and 2017. These people grew up and lived through a historically unique period of economic turmoil and social change following the collapse of the Soviet Union. When taken in a wider historical context, however, we see the repetition of a time-honored process whereby new money becomes respectable money. Rich Russians applies the sociological frameworks of Max Weber and Pierre Bourdieu in substantiating the claim that bourgeois Russians have acquired all sorts of cultural and social resources that help consolidate their power individually and as a group. They have elaborated more distinguished and refined tastes, rediscovered their family history, and begun actively engaging in philanthropy. Most importantly, they have worked out a narrative for themselves justifying why they deserve their elitist position in society—because of who they are and their superior qualities over others—and why they should be treated as equals by the West. This new, empirically grounded research helps us to understand the Russian bourgeois elite and its increasingly complex relations with Western societies.Less

Rich Russians : From Oligarchs to Bourgeoisie

Elisabeth Schimpfössl

Published in print: 2018-07-26

This book looks at representatives of the top 0.1 per cent of Russian society: their stories, trajectories, ideas about life, and how they see their role and position at the top of Russian society. They are explored through their own stories: eighty interviews with multimillionaires and billionaires, and their spouses and children, conducted between 2008 and 2017. These people grew up and lived through a historically unique period of economic turmoil and social change following the collapse of the Soviet Union. When taken in a wider historical context, however, we see the repetition of a time-honored process whereby new money becomes respectable money. Rich Russians applies the sociological frameworks of Max Weber and Pierre Bourdieu in substantiating the claim that bourgeois Russians have acquired all sorts of cultural and social resources that help consolidate their power individually and as a group. They have elaborated more distinguished and refined tastes, rediscovered their family history, and begun actively engaging in philanthropy. Most importantly, they have worked out a narrative for themselves justifying why they deserve their elitist position in society—because of who they are and their superior qualities over others—and why they should be treated as equals by the West. This new, empirically grounded research helps us to understand the Russian bourgeois elite and its increasingly complex relations with Western societies.

This book reviews the rapid rise of crime and violence in Latin America over the last few decades and offers an explanation to a striking paradox: In the midst of decreasing poverty, economic growth, ...
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This book reviews the rapid rise of crime and violence in Latin America over the last few decades and offers an explanation to a striking paradox: In the midst of decreasing poverty, economic growth, and democratization crime has risen throughout the region. Drawing from large data sets, I argue that this is because crime has become a profitable industry in weak states with outdated criminal justice systems unable to withstand the challenge posed by new criminal enterprises. Prosperity has enhanced consumer demand for illicit goods, fueling the growth of secondary and illegal markets, including markets for stolen goods and narcotics that can provide an income for millions of youngsters willing to take the risk of arrest and loss of life. While some countries have experienced moderate increases in criminality others have experienced catastrophic rates of violence, resulting in two types of stable equilibria: Low- and high-crime countries. I explain why different equilibria, between the profit opportunities provided by criminality and a weak criminal justice system, have triggered a rapid upward spiral of crime and a sharp increase in the intensity of violence in some states but a moderate upward trend in others, and why certain countries have transitioned from low- to high-crime environments with vicious cycles of high criminality that are very difficult to reverse. The resulting severe, undesired outcomes are studied in this book: serious predatory crime diversification, consolidation of organized crime, ineffective justice reforms, weak policing, and overcrowded prisons.Less

More Money, More Crime : Prosperity and Rising Crime in Latin America

Marcelo Bergman

Published in print: 2018-07-26

This book reviews the rapid rise of crime and violence in Latin America over the last few decades and offers an explanation to a striking paradox: In the midst of decreasing poverty, economic growth, and democratization crime has risen throughout the region. Drawing from large data sets, I argue that this is because crime has become a profitable industry in weak states with outdated criminal justice systems unable to withstand the challenge posed by new criminal enterprises. Prosperity has enhanced consumer demand for illicit goods, fueling the growth of secondary and illegal markets, including markets for stolen goods and narcotics that can provide an income for millions of youngsters willing to take the risk of arrest and loss of life. While some countries have experienced moderate increases in criminality others have experienced catastrophic rates of violence, resulting in two types of stable equilibria: Low- and high-crime countries. I explain why different equilibria, between the profit opportunities provided by criminality and a weak criminal justice system, have triggered a rapid upward spiral of crime and a sharp increase in the intensity of violence in some states but a moderate upward trend in others, and why certain countries have transitioned from low- to high-crime environments with vicious cycles of high criminality that are very difficult to reverse. The resulting severe, undesired outcomes are studied in this book: serious predatory crime diversification, consolidation of organized crime, ineffective justice reforms, weak policing, and overcrowded prisons.

Joshua T. McCabe

Sociology, Politics, Social Movements and Social Change, Population and Demography

This book challenges the conventional wisdom on American exceptionalism, offering the first and only comparative analysis of the politics of child and in-work tax credits. This comparative approach, ...
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This book challenges the conventional wisdom on American exceptionalism, offering the first and only comparative analysis of the politics of child and in-work tax credits. This comparative approach, analyzing the US, Canada, and the UK, upends everything we thought we knew about the politics of tax credits, accounting for both the timing of their development and the distribution of their benefits among families across liberal welfare regimes. Rather than attributing these changes to antiwelfare attitudes, mobilization of conservative forces, shifts toward workfare, or racial antagonism, the book argues that the growing use of tax credits for social policy was a strategic adaptation to austerity in all three countries but that the historical absence of family allowances in the US left the country with a policy legacy that institutionalized a distinct “logic of tax relief,” ensuring that the poorest American families would be ineligible for tax credits. Focusing on the twin puzzles of the growth and distribution of new tax credits across the three countries, the book explains both their convergence on the use of these tax credits and the US’ divergence from the UK and Canada on the distribution of these tax credits’ benefits.Less

The Fiscalization of Social Policy : How Taxpayers Trumped Children in the Fight Against Child Poverty

Joshua T. McCabe

Published in print: 2018-07-26

This book challenges the conventional wisdom on American exceptionalism, offering the first and only comparative analysis of the politics of child and in-work tax credits. This comparative approach, analyzing the US, Canada, and the UK, upends everything we thought we knew about the politics of tax credits, accounting for both the timing of their development and the distribution of their benefits among families across liberal welfare regimes. Rather than attributing these changes to antiwelfare attitudes, mobilization of conservative forces, shifts toward workfare, or racial antagonism, the book argues that the growing use of tax credits for social policy was a strategic adaptation to austerity in all three countries but that the historical absence of family allowances in the US left the country with a policy legacy that institutionalized a distinct “logic of tax relief,” ensuring that the poorest American families would be ineligible for tax credits. Focusing on the twin puzzles of the growth and distribution of new tax credits across the three countries, the book explains both their convergence on the use of these tax credits and the US’ divergence from the UK and Canada on the distribution of these tax credits’ benefits.

John L. Campbell

Sociology, Politics, Social Movements and Social Change, Social Stratification, Inequality, and Mobility

This book is about how Donald Trump, who had no prior public service, became president of the United States. It argues that Trump capitalized on a wave of increasing public discontent that stemmed ...
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This book is about how Donald Trump, who had no prior public service, became president of the United States. It argues that Trump capitalized on a wave of increasing public discontent that stemmed from the demise of the country’s Golden Age of prosperity. This involved decades-long trends in the American economy, race relations, ideology, and political polarization, all of which fueled rising discontent across America. It reached a tipping point by the time Barack Obama was elected president. When the 2008 financial crisis hit and Obama was elected the first African American president, he tried to resolve the crisis and fix the nation’s ailing health care system. But in doing so he pushed rising discontent over the edge. Political gridlock in Washington resulted. Discontent skyrocketed. Americans were fed up and looked for a savior. Trump was lucky to be in the right place at the right time and rode that wave of discontent all the way to the White House.Less

American Discontent : The Rise of Donald Trump and Decline of the Golden Age

John L. Campbell

Published in print: 2018-07-26

This book is about how Donald Trump, who had no prior public service, became president of the United States. It argues that Trump capitalized on a wave of increasing public discontent that stemmed from the demise of the country’s Golden Age of prosperity. This involved decades-long trends in the American economy, race relations, ideology, and political polarization, all of which fueled rising discontent across America. It reached a tipping point by the time Barack Obama was elected president. When the 2008 financial crisis hit and Obama was elected the first African American president, he tried to resolve the crisis and fix the nation’s ailing health care system. But in doing so he pushed rising discontent over the edge. Political gridlock in Washington resulted. Discontent skyrocketed. Americans were fed up and looked for a savior. Trump was lucky to be in the right place at the right time and rode that wave of discontent all the way to the White House.

This book examines how mobile telephony contributes to social change in rural India (West Bengal, Bankura district) on the basis of long-term ethnographic fieldwork in a village before and after the ...
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This book examines how mobile telephony contributes to social change in rural India (West Bengal, Bankura district) on the basis of long-term ethnographic fieldwork in a village before and after the introduction of mobile phones. The book investigates how mobile telephones emerged as multidimensional objects that not only enable telephone conversations, but also facilitate status aspirations, internet access, and entertainment practices. It explores how this multifaceted use of mobile phones has influenced economic, political, and social relationships, including gender relationships, and how these new social constellations relate to culture and development. The book examines social institutions as culturally constructed spheres tied to translocal processes that, nevertheless, have local meanings. The author delves into social and cultural changes to examine agency and power relationships: Who benefits from mobile telephony and how? Can people use mobile phones to further their aims to change their lives, or does phone use merely amplify existing social patterns and power relationships? Can mobile telephony induce development? Using a holistic ethnographic approach, the book develops a framework to understand how new media mediates social processes within interrelated social spheres and local hierarchies. It delves into mobile phone use as a multidimensional process with diverse impacts by exploring how media-saturated forms of interaction relate to preexisting contexts.Less

A Village Goes Mobile : Telephony, Mediation, and Social Change in Rural India

Sirpa Tenhunen

Published in print: 2018-06-28

This book examines how mobile telephony contributes to social change in rural India (West Bengal, Bankura district) on the basis of long-term ethnographic fieldwork in a village before and after the introduction of mobile phones. The book investigates how mobile telephones emerged as multidimensional objects that not only enable telephone conversations, but also facilitate status aspirations, internet access, and entertainment practices. It explores how this multifaceted use of mobile phones has influenced economic, political, and social relationships, including gender relationships, and how these new social constellations relate to culture and development. The book examines social institutions as culturally constructed spheres tied to translocal processes that, nevertheless, have local meanings. The author delves into social and cultural changes to examine agency and power relationships: Who benefits from mobile telephony and how? Can people use mobile phones to further their aims to change their lives, or does phone use merely amplify existing social patterns and power relationships? Can mobile telephony induce development? Using a holistic ethnographic approach, the book develops a framework to understand how new media mediates social processes within interrelated social spheres and local hierarchies. It delves into mobile phone use as a multidimensional process with diverse impacts by exploring how media-saturated forms of interaction relate to preexisting contexts.

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